Meet King Tut’s Father, Egypt’s First Revolutionary

Akhenaten upended the religion, art, and politics of ancient Egypt, and then his legacy was buried. Now he endures as a symbol of change.

By Peter Hessler
Photograph by Rena Effendi

Sometimes the most powerful commentary on a king is made by those who are silent. One morning in Amarna, a village in Upper Egypt about 200 miles south of Cairo, a set of delicate, sparrowlike bones were arranged atop a wooden table. “The clavicle is here, and the upper arm, the ribs, the lower legs,” said Ashley Shidner, an American bioarchaeologist. “This one is about a year and a half to two years old.”

The skeleton belonged to a child who lived at Amarna more than 3,300 years ago, when the site was Egypt’s capital. The city was founded by Akhenaten, a king who, along with his wife Nefertiti and his son, Tutankhamun, has captured the modern imagination as much as any other figure from ancient Egypt. This anonymous skeleton, in contrast, had been excavated from an unmarked grave. But the bones showed evidence of malnutrition, which Shidner and others have observed in the remains of dozens of Amarna children.

“The growth delay starts around seven and a half months,” Shidner said. “That’s when you start transition feeding from breast milk to solid food.” At Amarna this transition seems to have been delayed for many children. “Possibly the mother is making the decision that there’s not enough food.”

Until recently Akhenaten’s subjects seemed to be the only people who hadn’t weighed in on his legacy. Others have had plenty to say about the king, who ruled from around 1353 B.C. until 1336 B.C. and tried to transform Egyptian religion, art, and governance. Akhenaten’s successors were mostly scathing about his reign. Even Tutankhamun—whose brief reign has been a subject of fascination since his tomb was discovered in 1922—issued a decree criticizing conditions under his father: “The land was in distress; the gods had abandoned this land.” During the next dynasty, Akhenaten was referred to as “the criminal” and “the rebel,” and pharaohs destroyed his statues and images, trying to remove him from history entirely.

In Egypt, Debate Rages Over Scans of King Tut's Tomb

Tests for hidden chambers yield conflicting results. Investigation likely to continue.

By Peter Hessler
PUBLISHED MAY 9, 2016

CAIRO, EGYPT - Never underestimate the mysterious, unpredictable, and slightly insane power of Egyptology.

This was the lesson of this past weekend’s Second Annual Tutankhamun Grand Egyptian Museum Conference in Cairo, where attendees may have been lulled by a lineup of sessions that included “Tutankhamun’s Embroidery,” “A Constructive Insight of Some Plant Species from Tutankhamun’s Tomb,” and “The Golden Pendant of Tutankhamun: A New Interpretation of the Epithet of Wertethekau.” If only the epithets had stopped with Wertethekau.

On the third and final day of the conference, more than a hundred people watched two former government ministers sit onstage and angrily accuse each other of trying to drill holes into World Heritage Sites without proper permission. Other exchanges were friendlier, if no less passionate. A couple of scholars bantered about the shape of Queen Nefertiti’s lips, and there was a running debate about whether adult male pharaohs wore earrings during the 14th century B.C., when Tut ruled.

But nothing compared to the news about the boy king’s tomb. After months of speculation about the possibility of hidden chambers in the tomb, officials revealed another surprise: that two different radar scans of King Tut’s burial chamber have resulted in contradictory conclusions.

“Until now, we don’t have a conclusive result,” Khaled El-Enany, the minister of antiquities, announced on the final day of the conference. He called for the formation of a committee to decide the next step, which will likely include further examination by radar and other high-tech methods. On his way out of the lecture hall, El-Enany continued:  “This is my message—that science will talk.”

Scans of King Tut’s Tomb Reveal New Evidence of Hidden Rooms

Second round of radar scanning will look for more clues to what lies behind the walls of Tut’s burial chamber. One theory: the tomb of famous Queen Nefertiti.

By Peter Hessler
PUBLISHED MARCH 17, 2016

For at least 3,339 years, nobody has seen what lies behind the west and north walls of the burial chamber of Tutankhamun.  But this secret of three millennia might not last much longer.

On Thursday, Mamdouh Eldamaty, the Egyptian antiquities minister, held a press conference in Cairo to announce a tantalizing new piece of evidence:  Radar scans on those walls have revealed not only the presence of hidden chambers, but also unidentified objects that lie within these rooms. These objects, Eldamaty said, seem to be composed of both metal and organic materials.

“It could be the discovery of the century,” he said. Noting that he can’t speculate further about the things that lie within the chambers, he said that another radar test has been scheduled for the end of this month, in order to determine the best way to proceed with the investigation.

The results of the radar scan represent another step toward a radical new understanding of the most famous tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. First discovered by archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922, the tomb of King Tut yielded an astonishing array of grave goods—more than 5,000 artifacts, many of them in pristine condition. It was the most intact royal tomb ever found, providing Egyptologists with an unprecedented glimpse into the material life of a king who ruled during the 14th century B.C.

What the world might discover from the King Tut mask restoration

German expert Christian Eckmann is leading the restoration of King Tut's famous mask, which was damaged by a botched repair job. DW met him in Cairo to find out what's hiding behind that clumsy layer of glue.

Since the golden burial mask of King Tutankhamun was unearthed nearly a century ago, visitors from around the world have flocked to the Egyptian museum to view the famed relic. An icon of ancient Egypt, it has become one of the world's most famous works of art.

So in August 2014, when the beard attached to the 3,300-year-old mask was knocked off while being returned to its display case after workers replaced a burned out light, panic set. In a hasty attempt in the early morning hours, workers glued the beard back on with insoluble epoxy resin. That proved to be a major error.

"They did not attach it in its original position, the beard was slightly bent to the left side," Christian Eckmann, the archaeologist tasked with restoring the artifact, told DW in an interview in the garden of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

"They also put some glue onto the chin and beard, so it was visible. It was not adequately done, and then in January 2015 the press found out, and the whole case was a scandal somehow," Eckmann explains. He is a renowned restorer from the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Archaeological research institute in Mainz.

Radar Scans in King Tut’s Tomb Suggest Hidden Chambers

After two nights of tests in the Valley of the Kings, new evidence reinforces the theory that undiscovered rooms may lie behind the painted walls.

By Peter Hessler, National Geographic 
PUBLISHED SAT NOV 28

LUXOR, Egypt—After two days of radar scans in the tomb of Tutankhamun, archaeologists have concluded that preliminary examination of the data provides evidence that unopened sections lie behind two hidden doorways in the pharaoh’s underground burial chamber.

The results, announced Saturday morning at a news conference in Luxor, bolster the theory of Nicholas Reeves, a British archaeologist who believes that the tomb contains another royal burial. The hidden tomb, he has speculated, belongs to Nefertiti, King Tut’s mother-in-law, who may have ruled as a female pharaoh during Egypt’s 18th Dynasty. If so, this would be only the second intact royal burial site to be discovered in modern times—and it would, in the words of Mamdouh Eldamaty, the Egyptian antiquities minister, represent “one of the most important finds of the century.” At the press conference, he said he was “90 percent positive” that another chamber lies behind the north wall of the tomb.

On Friday, Eldamaty stood next to that wall, which is painted with a scene depicting the burial rituals of the boy pharaoh, who ruled in the 14th century B.C. “The radar scan tells us that on this side of the north wall, we have two different materials,” he said. “We believe that there could be another chamber.”

The scans—conducted by Hirokatsu Watanabe, a Japanese radar specialist— also provide evidence of a second hidden doorway in the adjoining west wall.

Together these features lend credence to Reeves’s theory, which he made public in July. Since then examinations of the physical features of the burial chamber have added support. But until the tests began on Thursday, the evidence ran no deeper than the surface of the walls. Radar scans had never previously been conducted in the tomb, and they represent a crucial step in the investigation. For the first time, specialists have collected data about both the material structure of the walls and the open spaces behind them. It’s these spaces that are most intriguing—they could contain artifacts and possibly even burial goods that rival those found with Tutankhamun.

Infrared Scans Show Possible Hidden Chamber in King Tut’s Tomb

The room may conceal the burial chamber of Queen Nefertiti, but further tests are necessary.

By Mark Strauss, National Geographic 

The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities has just announced that a scientific team has found initial evidence of what might be a hidden chamber in the tomb of King Tutankhamun.

A survey of the tomb was conducted using infrared thermography, which measures temperature distributions on a surface.

According to Mamdouh el-Damaty, the Minister of Antiquities, “the preliminary analysis indicates the presence of an area different in its temperature than the other parts of the northern wall.” One possible explanation is that the variation in temperature is, in effect, an infrared shadow of an open area behind the wall.

The finding is consistent with the theory of archaeologist Nicholas Reeves, who, earlier this year, published a paper in which he claimed that the tomb of the 18th-Dynasty pharaoh includes two doorways that were plastered and painted over.

The doorways, Reeves argues, are among several clues indicating that the tomb was originally built for Nefertiti, who died in 1331 B.C.  She was the principal wife of Akhenaten, who is believed to have fathered Tutankhamun with another wife.

Outcomes of the “Burial of Nefertity” ’s International conference

Ministry of Antiquities 
Press Office

Antiquities Minister Dr. Mamdouh Eldamaty declared that the evidences that the British Scientist “Nicholas Reeves” relied upon using a new technology to which previous generations had no access, to come up with his new archaeological hypothesis might lead us to a phenomenal archaeological discovery that could be similar to that of discovering the Tomb of Tut Ankh Amun itself. The declaration came in the international press conference held yesterday October 1st 2015 at the State Information Service, an event witnessed by a huge number of Egyptologists, scientists, reporters and journalists from all over the world.

Eldamaty pointed out that he agrees with Reeves in his theory concerning the possibility of the presence of some hidden chambers that might embrace the burial of a Royal Lady, probably “Kia” mother of King Tut Ankh Amun or “Merit Aten” wife of “Semenkh ka Re” brother of the Boy King and his successor. Eldamaty expressed his sincere wishes that the rear wall of Tut Ankh Amun’s Tomb might reveal Nefertity’s Tomb as anticipated by Reeves, emphasizing that the Ministry of Antiquities is doing its best to facilitate the work performed by Reeves. He also said that this file will be discussed immediately by the Permanent Committee to take the necessary procedures.

Eldamaty added that actual works inside the Tomb is expected to start within one to three months after studying and deciding which is the best technical procedure to be used in order not cause any harm to the original Tomb.

Egyptian minister believes hidden chamber may not contain Queen Nefertiti

Egypt’s minister of antiquities posits that the hidden chamber behind Tutankhamun’s tomb’s northern wall could be of his mother Kiya

By Nevine El-Aref , Tuesday 29 Sep 2015

Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty opposes part of the theory of British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves, who claims that a hidden chamber located behind the tomb’s northern wall could be Queen Nefertiti’s resting place.
Eldamaty suggests that the chamber could belong to his mother, Queen Kiya, and not his stepmother, Queen Nefertiti, for two reasons.

The first reason, according to the minister, is that when Tutankhamun came to the throne, Nefertiti was already deceased. Secondly, when Tutanakhmun restored the cult of Amun and abandoned his father’s monotheistic religion, leaving the Aten capital Akhtaten to Thebes, he certainly would have taken his mother Kiya with him.

Eldamaty explained to Ahram Online that Tutankhamun’s unexpected death prompted the Valley of the Kings’ priests to search for an already complete tomb to bury him in, as they only had 70 days to place his mummy in its final resting place. "Kiya’s tomb was an ideal choice," Eldamaty suggested.

Eldamaty asserted that they may have selected a completed tomb of one of his family members, such as Kiya’s, taking a section of her tomb and dedicating it to Tutankhamun.

He added that an extension was possibly built in order to house the number of shrines made for him, replacing the several antechambers that are normally found in a royal tomb.

Anticipation grows at possibility of Tutankhamun tomb's hidden chambers

Examinations completed on Monday indicate the theory of British archeologist Nicholas Reeves may well be right

By Nevine El-Aref , Monday 28 Sep 2015

Antiquities minister Mamdouh Eldamaty announced on Monday that the first examinations carried out by himself and British archeologist Nicholas Reeves in Luxor on Tutankhamun's tomb have revealed that the tomb's northern and western walls both hide chambers.

There are scratching and markings on both walls like those found on the entrance gate of Tutankhamun's tomb when it was discovered in 1922, Eldamaty explained.

"This indicates that the western and northern walls of Tutankhamun's tomb could hide two burial chambers," Eldamaty told Ahram Online.

Nicholas Reeves said their investigations showed the tomb's ceiling extends behind the northern and western walls. He is now almost convinced his theory suggesting the existence of two undiscovered chambers is correct.

"After our first examination of the walls we can do nothing more until we receive the all-clear from the radar device to confirm the our findings," Reeves told Ahram Online.

Eldamaty has promised that on 4 November, the same day Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered, the radar results of scans on the two walls will be announced.

Field trip to search for Nefertiti's resting place to start within a week

Archaeologist Nicholas Reeves is to arrive to Luxor, 28 September, in the hope of confirming his theory on the location of Nefertiti's final resting place in Tutankhamun's tomb

By Nevine El-Aref , Sunday 20 Sep 2015

On 28 September, Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty and British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves, along with a group of Egyptian and foreign scientists, are to embark on an investigation trip to Luxor to prove Reeves' theory that Queen Nefertiti's remains lay in Tutankhamun's tomb.

Via state-of-the-art equipment, Reeves is to examine Tutankhamun's northern wall, in order to inspect behind it and possibly locate the existence of the final resting place of Queen Nefertiti.

Early August, Reeves published a theory suggesting that the west and north painted walls inside King Tutankhamun’s tomb have two secret passageways that lead to two chambers, one of them containing the remains of Nefertiti — queen of Egypt and the chief consort and wife of the monotheistic King Akhenaten, Tutankhamun's father. The remaining chamber could be another gallery for Tutankhamun.

A press conference is to be organised in Cairo upon their arrival from Luxor to announce the results of the investigation.

In a telephone call with Reeves, he told Ahram Online he would not be able to release any statement until the scientific work and examination are carried out.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/141972/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Field-trip-to-search-for-Nefertitis-resting-place-.aspx

Looking for Queen Nefertiti

Does the ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti rest in the tomb of the Boy King Tutankhamun, as a British Egyptologist has claimed, asks Nevine El-Aref

The beautiful Queen Nefertiti, wife of the monotheistic King Akhenaten and her son-in-law the golden Boy King Tutankhamun, has always perplexed archaeologists.

Nefertiti acquired unprecedented power during the first 12 years of the reign of her husband Akhenaten. She occupied the throne alongside her husband and appeared nearly twice as often in reliefs as Akhenaten during the first five years of his reign. She continued to appear in reliefs even when, in the twelfth year of Akhenaten’s reign, she disappeared from the scene and her name vanished from the pages of history.

Some think she either died from plague or fell out of favour, but recent theories have denied this claim. Four images of Nefertiti adorn Akhenaten’s sarcophagus, not the usual goddesses, indicating that her importance to the pharaoh continued up until his death and disproving the idea that she fell out of favour. It also shows her continuous role as a deity or semi-deity with Akhenaten.

Shortly after her disappearance, Akhenaten took a co-regent to the throne. The identity of this person has created speculation. One theory says it was Nefertiti herself in a new guise as a “female king,” like the female pharaohs Sobkneferu and Hatshepsut who ruled the country for several years.

Another theory introduces the idea of two co-regents, a male one called Smenkhkare and Nefertiti under the name of Neferneferuaten. Some scholars believe that Nefertiti became co-regent with her husband, and that her role as queen consort was taken over by her eldest daughter Meritaten.

Although her iconic bust, now on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin, was unearthed in an artist’s workshop at Tel Al-Amarna in 1912 by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt, neither her tomb nor mummy have yet been unearthed. As for the Boy King Tutankhamun, his mysterious death, lineage and health have seen many controversies and debates.

What lies beneath?

A tantalising clue to the location of a long-sought pharaonic tomb 

 

NOTHING has inspired generations of archaeologists like the discovery in 1922 of the treasure-packed tomb of Tutankhamun. What if another untouched Egyptian trove lies buried, not in a distant patch of desert, nor even nearby amid the overlapping tomb-shafts of Luxor’s Valley of the Kings, but instead just a millimetre’s distance from plain view?

This is the dramatic hypothesis of a just-published paper by Nicholas Reeves, a British Egyptologist who co-discovered an undisturbed Egyptian tomb in 2000, and who is at the University of Arizona. His key evidence is disarmingly simple, and in fact free to see on the internet in the form of photographs published by Factum Arte, a Madrid- and Bologna-based specialist in art replication that recently created a spectacular, life-sized facsimile of Tutankhamun’s tomb, intended for tourists to visit without endangering the original.

What Mr Reeves found in these ultra-high-resolution images, which reveal the texture of walls beneath layers of paint in the original tomb, was a number of fissures and cracks that suggest the presence of two passages that were blocked and plastered to conceal their existence. One of these would probably lead to a storeroom; its position and small size mirror that of an already-uncovered storeroom inside the multi-chambered tomb. The other, bigger possible doorway in the north wall of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber suggests something much more exciting.

There are several oddities about Tutankhamun’s tomb. It is small compared with others in the valley. The objects found in it, while magnificent, seemed hurriedly placed and were found to be largely second-hand; even the boy-king’s famous gilded funerary mask sports the strangely unmanly feature of pierced ears. The tomb’s main axis is angled to the right of the entrance shaft, an arrangement typical of Egyptian queens rather than kings.

The truth about Tutankhamun (2)

In the second of two articles, Zahi Hawass continues his explanation of the mystery of Tutankhamun

November 2014 marks 92 years since the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in Luxor. This is an occasion that could be used to promote tourism to the city where the golden king and his tomb are located. It is also be an ideal opportunity to announce that only one ticket is now needed to visit Tutankhamun’s family tombs, including those of Amenhotep II, Yuya and Tuya, and tomb KV55.

Even with the passage of time, we should never forget what the English team did to the pharaoh’s mummy in 1968. Jewellery disappeared, and pieces of the mummy were taken without permission. Only last year an English team announced, based on their examination of these stolen pieces, that the mummy of Tutankhamun had been burned.

My intention in this article, and in the article published in the Weekly last week, is to show that despite the problems that Tutankhamun had during his life, he was in good health and used to hunt wild animals. He was not disabled, contrary to what was alleged on a recent TV show.

Last week I wrote about the lies told in an English TV show about the golden king, and how a scientist had perjured himself in front of scholars all over the world. The truth about Tutankhamun is the real discovery made by the great British archaeologist Howard Carter, enabling us to discover new material about the boy king every year. The truth has been revealed by the great work of the Egyptian Mummy Project and the discovery of Tutankhamun’s family and how he died.

Egyptian scholars question incest claims in BBC King Tut documentary

By Rany Mostafa

CAIRO: Several Egyptian archaeologists have deeply questioned the results of recent research that has attributed the death of Egypt’s Pharaoh Tutankhamen to a genetic disorder.

Last week, researchers at the Institute for Mummies and Icemen in Italy issued a report suggesting the parents of Tutankhamen were brother and sister, from whom he inherited genetic impairments that caused his premature death at the age of 19.

Renowned archaeologist Zahi Hawass, as quoted by Al-Ahram Sunday, fiercely described the result as “slander” aimed at “distorting the fame of Egypt’s most famous pharaoh.”

Tutankhamen’s parentage is a historical debate, and Hawass said the assumptions claiming his parents were related are nothing but “medical conclusions that lack historical evidence.”

“The report is a media stunt aimed at acquiring fame at the expense of Tutankhamen,” he added.

The report is based on a virtual autopsy that created a full size computer-generated image of Tutankhamen by using 2,000 computerized tomography (CT) scans of the pharaoh’s mummified body, according to the Daily Mail.

The report includes images portraying Tutankhamen with girlish hips, a club foot and buck teeth. It also suggests that Queen Nefertiti—Tutankhamen’s mother—was the sister of his father, Pharaoh Akhenaton.

Museum Pieces - Nefertiti offering flowers to Aten

Caption: Nefertiti, ca. 1352-1336 B.C.E. Limestone, painted, 9 1/4 x 15 3/16 in. (23.5 x 38.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 71.89. Creative Commons-BY

Occasionally we can identify one of the members of the Amarna royal family by a unique characteristic. The woman on this column drum has a tall, flat-topped crown worn exclusively by Nefertiti. This same headdress appears on the famous bust of the queen that is in the Berlin Museum.

Limestone sunk relief which, to judge from the convex curve of the decorated surface, once formed part of a column. To the left is Nefertiti, facing right, wearing the crown peculiar to her and Queen Tiy. She offers a formal bouquet to the Aten, three of whose rays reach to receive it. In front of her stands Akhenaton wearing a Blue Crown with streamers. Only the rear third of his body is preserved. Nefertiti is preserved from the waist up. 

Inscription: one line above the offering scene: “given life forever eternally”. Above “given life” are the bottom portions of two cartouches. 

Condition: Lower left corner broken off and replaced. Chips out of Nefertiti's crown, her right arm and elbow, her left hand and wrist, and the base of her neck. Traces of blue paint in hieroglyphs, flowers, and both crowns. Traces of red paint in both bodies, hands of the Aten and the base of the bouquet.

Medium: Limestone, painted
Possible Place Made: El Amarna, Egypt
Dates: ca. 1352-1336 B.C.E.
Dynasty: late XVIII Dynasty
Period: New Kingdom, Amarna Period
Dimensions: 9 1/4 x 15 3/16 in. (23.5 x 38.5 cm)  (show scale)
Collections:Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art
Museum Location: This item is on view in Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, Amarna Period, Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Gallery, 3rd Floor
Accession Number: 71.89
Credit Line: Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
Rights Statement: Creative Commons-BY

Source: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/3805/Nefertiti#

Akhenaten: mad, bad, or brilliant?

He fathered Tutankhamun, married Nefertiti, and was one of the most original thinkers of his era. Then why is the pharoah Akhenaten often dismissed as a madman?

By Alastair Sooke 09 Jan 2014

Almost 200 miles south of Cairo, in the heart of Middle Egypt, the archaeological site of Amarna occupies a great bay of desert beside the River Nile. To the uninformed eye, this semicircle of barren land, bound by the east bank of the river and enormous limestone cliffs, looks like nothing much: a vast, stricken dust bowl, approximately seven miles long and three miles wide, scattered with sandy hillocks. But 33 centuries ago, this spot was home to tens of thousands of ancient Egyptians, brought there by the will of a single man: the pharaoh Akhenaten.

Rebel, tyrant, and prophet of arguably the world’s earliest monotheistic religion, Akhenaten has been called history’s first individual. His impact upon ancient Egyptian customs and beliefs stretching back for centuries was so alarming that, in the generations following his death in 1336 BC, he was branded a heretic. Official king lists omitted his name.

For my money, this makes him the most fascinating and controversial figure in Egyptian history. And that’s before you consider his marriage to Nefertiti, known as the Mona Lisa of antiquity thanks to her austerely beautiful painted limestone bust discovered in a sculptor’s workshop at Amarna and now in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, or the likelihood that he fathered Tutankhamun, the most famous pharaoh of them all. If I were in charge of the British Museum, I would commission an exhibition about Akhenaten in a trice.

Akhenaten was not supposed to become pharaoh. The son of Amenhotep III, who dominated the first half of the 14th century BC, ruling over a court of unprecedented luxury and magnificence that placed great emphasis on solar theology, Prince Amenhotep, as he was then called, was younger brother to the crown Prince Thutmose. Following Thutmose’s unexpected death, though, he became the heir apparent – and when his father died in 1353 BC, he took the throne as Amenhotep IV.

Nefertiti as sensual goddess

Lecturer details research suggesting more complex role for Egyptian queen

By Valerie Vande Panne, Harvard Correspondent

In history, the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti is depicted as a powerful, independent woman. Her bust, on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin, is one of the most reproduced works of ancient Egypt.

But Jacquelyn Williamson, visiting lecturer on women’s studies and Near Eastern studies and women’s studies in religion program research associate at Harvard Divinity School (HDS), suggests that Nefertiti wasn’t quite who people imagine she was, and eventually was revered as something of a sex goddess.

Nefertiti is “often represented as a powerful and independent figure,” said Williamson, and has a “reputation as being a uniquely strong queen.”

“I expected images of her smiting the heads of the enemies of Egypt, an act usually reserved for the king,” said Williamson, who has identified a temple that she believes was the queen’s. “She is shown in the tombs of the elite at Amarna at a natural height to the king.”

Amenhotep IV became king when Egypt was wealthy and its empire was strong, covering territory from as far north as Syria to as far south as Sudan. He worshipped the sun god Re, whose visible manifestation in the daytime sky was known as the Aten. He gave this god prominence. When Amenhotep took the throne, he became Akhenaten, or “one who is effective for the Aten.”

The queen and the sculptor

Egyptologist thinks he has found tomb of artist who created famed bust of Nefertiti

By Corydon Ireland, Harvard Staff Writer

For those of us aging fast, it is nice to know that one the most beautiful faces in the world is more than 3,300 years old.

That face is on the bust of Queen Nefertiti, the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten, whose reign in Egypt spanned 1353–1336 BCE. This famous artifact, 44 pounds and life-size, has a layer of painted gypsum stucco over a full-featured limestone core. It was discovered a century ago in the ruins of an ancient artist’s studio in Amarna, south of Cairo. First made public in 1924, it fast became an icon of feminine beauty.

A slender, smooth neck gives way to skin the color of golden sand. Then come full, red lips; a dramatic, sloping nose; almond eyes; and arching, dark eyebrows. Above the face is a colorful, back-sweeping, cylindrical crown. It’s a lot for the eye to take in, especially since the work was likely just an artist’s model, and never intended for display.

Found scattered through the same studio were 22 plaster casts of faces. Some depict older women with every wrinkle and sag, an artistic anomaly in a culture that stylized women as slender and beautiful. (Nefertiti’s image beneath the stucco, recent CT scans show, was more realistic: a woman with lesser cheekbones, wrinkled cheeks, and a bump on the nose.)

But the world sees just the surface. The face “is part of our culture,” said French Egyptologist Alain Zivie in a Harvard lecture last Thursday, “like a picture of Che Guevara or Einstein or the Mona Lisa in Paris.”

Akhenaten: Egyptian Pharaoh, Nefertiti's Husband, Tut's Father

By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor   |   August 30, 2013

Akhenaten was a pharaoh of Egypt who reigned over the country for about 17 years between roughly 1353 B.C. and 1335 B.C.

A religious reformer he made the Aten, the sun disc, the center of Egypt’s religious life and carried out an iconoclasm that saw the names of Amun, a pre-eminent Egyptian god, and his consort Mut, be erased from monuments and documents throughout Egypt’s empire. 

When he ascended the throne his name was Amenhotep IV, but in his sixth year of rule he changed it to “Akhenaten” a name that the late Egyptologist Dominic Montserrat translated roughly as the “Benevolent one of (or for) the Aten.”

In honor of the Aten, he constructed an entirely new capital at an uninhabited place, which we now call Amarna, out in the desert. Its location was chosen so that its sunrise conveyed a symbolic meaning. “East of Amarna the sun rises in a break in the surrounding cliffs. In this landscape the sunrise could be literally ‘read’ as if it were the hieroglyph spelling Akhet-aten or ‘Horizon of the Aten’ — the name of the new city,” wrote Montserrat in his book "Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt" (Routledge, 2000).

He notes that this capital would quickly grow to become about 4.6 square miles (roughly 12 square kilometers) in size. After his death, the pharaoh’s religious reforms quickly collapsed, his new capital became abandoned and his successors denounced him.

Akhenaten, either before or shortly after he became pharaoh, would marry Nefertiti, who in some works of art is shown standing equal next to her husband. Some have even speculated that she may have become a co-, or even sole, ruler of Egypt. 

Lost Tombs - In search of history's greatest rulers

By JARRETT A. LOBELL and ERIC A. POWELL
Tuesday, July 16, 2013

The improbable discovery last year of Richard III’s skeleton under a parking lot in Leicester, England, is a reminder that while some burials of great historical figures are lost to posterity, careful archaeological sleuthing could still bring them to light. The debate over where to rebury the notorious English king illustrates how important finding the physical remains of these lost rulers can be. And study of Richard III’s remains promises to add to our understanding of both the man himself and the time he lived in. Finding a ruler’s lost tomb may be the most romantic discovery possible in archaeology, but it can also be an opportunity to create a richer picture of ancient life.

Here are the stories behind the lost final resting places of seven great royal figures, which, if found, could give us exciting insights into our collective past.

Nefertiti, Great Royal Wife and Queen of Egypt

Ruled ca. 1348-1330 B.C.

In the 1880s, residents living near the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna discovered a large multichambered rock-cut tomb. It was one of many such tombs at Amarna, but its impressive size distinguished it from the others. Unfortunately, the tomb, called Amarna 26, has been badly damaged by looters, weather, and time, and many of the most significant artifacts were removed at some point, either in antiquity or more recently. Relatively little of the tomb’s fragile decoration is intact. Nevertheless, enough inscribed artifacts do survive—including more than 200 shabti figurines, an alabaster chest, and two large granite sarcophagi—that archaeologists are reasonably certain the tomb, also called the Royal Tomb, belonged to the 18th Dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten and his daughter Meketaten.